Entries from April 2006 ↓

I’m sure everyone and their mother knows this by now - Wii is the official name for Nintendo’s new console! And it has just been added to my spell check dictionary! I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, it needs some time to soak in I guess…

I got into a discussion earlier today about how 'Guild War: Factions' is almost upon us.  I was saying that I've almost preordered a half dozen or so times over the last couple of weeks - just to get the pre-play weekend and all that.  In truth I was going to order the collectors edition but, since Guild Wars hasn't fit very well into my busy life I held off - and after seeing over at brinstar's blog that it has been delayed I'm kind of glad I didn't throw any money down on it.  I guess I'll just have to buy a 'regular' copy when it hits the shelves.  If there are any left…

The weather cleared up for a few minutes yesterday… 

The weather cleared up a bit so I ran over to one of the local abandoned factories to get a test outdoor shot.

One thing someone might notice from looking around my apartment is that we have a handful of different camera's laying around. There has been a Polaroid Sun 600 on the table next to my desk for quite a while now and I always wondered if it still worked. So, today I picked up some film to test it out. The weather is kind of crappy out right now so I used Kitty as my test model.

The girlfriend and I just have just returned from seeing "Silent Hill" and I have to tell you it was much better then I expected it to be.  It was a very enjoyable watch and was even good enough to keep the woman entertained.

I'm still working on my Now Playing hack and still have to write some code so that when posting reviews in the library it is inserted into main blog database.  I figured that for the reviews I'd just write up a quick blurb covering my overall feelings of the game.

Library Link:

• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 

I am in the process of hacking up the "Now Reading" plugin from Roblog into a "Now Playing" plugin.  And for some reason I couldn't get the library links to work.  So after a bit of messing around it seems I've figured it out.  I realized that the actual links to the library were working just the rewriting rules weren't.  That lead me to 'wp-includes/rewrite.php'.  Around line 86 you should see 'var $use_verbose_rules = false;' what I did was change 'false' to 'true'.  After uploading the change to my server I went to the Wordpress control panel and updated my permalink settings.  Then like magic everything works like it should.  :D  I'm going to mess around with the script some more as time permits who knows maybe I'll release my hack in the near future…

Well, six hours of game play later and I've finished the story of Tomb Raider: Legend. I still need to collect all the artifacts and do the time trials before the game is 100% but, I doubt I'll bother to do that. I'm a little disappointed that the game was so short and very disappointed with it's "Halo 2" style ending. On the other hand, I don't really have a schedule that it suitable for prolonged gaming sessions so maybe the length is for the best. All in all - pretty solid game for what may be the last in the series.

As I said yesterday the combat mechanics are a bit shoddy. And it gets much more annoying later in the game - I had to consistently run and jump up to where the enemies were standing just to hit them. I always figured Lara for a much better shot then that - I guess I was wrong. The puzzle elements of the game are good and not overwhelmingly difficult to solve. Some of the reviewers didn't like the motorcycle sections of the game but I didn't really mind it. Although, the Kazakhstan (must every game have a Kazakhstan stage these days?) one was a tad to long - made it a bit boring.

I had a good time and was pleased enough that maybe someday I will go back back and 100% it…

Related Links:

• Tomb Raider: Legend at MetaCritic (Xbox)
  
• Tomb Raider: Legend Walkthrough

I received my copy of "Tomb Raider: Legend" yesterday so, I spent a little while this morning working my way through the first level. I haven't played a Tomb Raider game to completion since Tomb Raider 2 - I'm not the biggest fan of the series. So far the game feels like an updated version of the original game. It looks really good on the Xbox, too bad I don't own a 360 to compare the two. The environment looks great, which it should being so late in the life of the Xbox. All of the character animations are incredibly smooth, I didn't notice anything off with the Lara's movement. The game play is very tight - a lot tighter then I expected it to be. There is section of the first level where you have to dodge your way through a trap with "Dragons Lair" type interaction - meaning hit a button when they tell you. I'm guessing that will pop up a few more times throughout the game. The combat seems OK so far, it's nothing great but since this game is supposed to be pretty puzzle/tomb raiding oriented it should do the job. Sorry about the lack of screen shots - my Xbox is hooked up to the TV at the moment, maybe I'll move it back later and take some. Well, I guess I should get back to the tomb raiding…